


Holding Out For A Hero

by ProwlingThunder



Series: Like Good Soldiers [3]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Bonding, Comic Book fan, Gen, Hero Worship, Mentions of Violence, No Spoilers, Pining, Psychic Wolves, Psychic Wolves For Lupercalia, Raiders, WOLFBOND, pre-game, wolf pups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:08:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had been the closest thing to comic-book superheroes I’d ever seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding Out For A Hero

I knew that the heart of the Minutemen was our care, our compassion for the well-being of the masses. The Minutemen were the guardians of the people, and I’d never seen them not come when a town was in need of protection.

I’d grown up watching them, wishing to  _ be _ them. And who hadn’t, really? They had been the closest thing to comic-book superheroes I’d ever seen, small roving packs of guardians and their brothers, all righteous teeth and lasers, coming in to save people who couldn’t save themselves, staying to build a bulwark; from nature, from other people, from things that used to  _ be _ other people, and just weren’t anymore.

The first time I had ever seen one was when I was a boy. Raiders had swept through our home just after the harvest, stealing weeks worth of food, clean water, and most of the able-bodied adults that we’d had. Some of the elders had banded together and sent out the call, recalling that amongst all the gunfire and blood, there had been the threat of  _ coming back _ .

We wouldn’t have survived another hit, and even as a whelp, I knew that. But early one morning, just a few days later, a whole pack of them made their way into town and settled in, and my Gran, she had decided the safest place for me while they were there was tucked inside the house. She didn’t let me out that week, not once, so I didn’t really know what was going on, but from a gap in my bedroom wall I could see the town center, where the men and their wolves made camp, and I knew I spent a lot of time in there, just peeking through.

To a boy they were all huge, and some where drab grays and browns but some were dust-red, the color of Commonwealth dust; and when they slept, they were piles of wind-kicked dust, and when they stood up in the storm on the sixth, I didn’t even notice them leave town.

I woke to the call of wolves on the last day, triumphant howling echoing across the wasteland, and known in my heart that my folks were coming home, that everyone’s folks were coming home, and the Minutemen had made good on that promise, like only superheroes had ever done, in the old comics, and I’d  _ wanted _ to be a part of them so I could do it too.

I wanted people to look at me like people had watched the wolf-pack, like they continued to do for years. I wanted to  _ be  _ them, and the urge didn’t leave when the pack did.

\--

My parents collected comic books for me, trading caps for pieces of old-world past-times. Sometimes, when burning the midnight oil, I could hear my Gran telling my parents to stop encouraging me, but it was easier to ignore her with real heroes in my hands.

My favorites were the wolf-brothers. The Silver Shroud and his pale wolf-lady, her collar a dark scarf against her nape; Grognak and his brother, sleek and sharp with a collar made from enemy bones. I loved them, more than any Captain Cosmos comic my folks managed to get their hands on.

They had protected people. They had been heroes.

They’d had wolves, just like the Minutemen.

Gran didn’t understand what drew me to them. My ma and pa didn’t either, but Gran seemed actively opposed. I didn’t know why. I knew what I wanted though, and no matter how many comics my parents bought for me, a wolf on paper would never trump a wolf at my side.

Maybe that was why Gran didn’t let me out of the house, that very first time.

\--

I left the settlement with the wolf-pack at seventeen, the lone unbonded whelp that I was. One of the tawny wolves was a female, and her and her brother walked with me in the middle of formation. When we camped at night, I learned terms and wolf-lore that my abandoned comics back at home had never managed to explain.

We headed up north, following the circuit the packs usually traveled. I soaked up the stories about being wolf-bonded instead of nose-blind-- which was they called people who didn’t have a brother or sister to watch their back-- and all the things, good and bad, that went with it.

We ended up in a little settlement called Haven, where a wolf-sister and her brother were posted, and it was there that I saw wolf-pups for the first time, three months old and ready to bond. The pack I’d been traveling with camped in the center of Haven too, which I had learned was the custom; people always knew where they’d be if they needed them, and all the settlements were small enough they could be anywhere in a hurry.

It was good practice. Sound, tactical. The sort of thing the Shroud and his sister would do, when staking out for trouble.

We’d spent a few days in Haven before I realized why we were there, other roving packs spilling in, bring with them more people like me, all of us nose-blind. Some of the pups took to people right off the bat; there’d been two people in the third and second pack both who had all but sat down with the litter and walked away with siblings at their heels.

But we left Haven after a week, and I left still blind. I didn’t get a wolf in the next settlement, or the next, or even the one after that.

It was only after that, when I’d about come to terms with being nose-blind for my tenure-- and the wolf-brothers assured m e the odds of that were slim, new litters were being born every month-- that we ended up in a settlement too small and too new to be on any map. The locals were calling it  _ Liberty _ , and the only reason the Minutemen knew it was there was because one of our own lived there.

I’d looked at the tiny corpse of dead trees and the ramshackled, cobbled shacks, and  _ felt _ in my heart that I wasn’t going to leave blind this time. I knew it, the same way I’d known my folks were coming home years ago.

The lady-wolf that lived there was dusky, but her pups ranged from clay red to shale-stone gray-- and it was one of those that came up to me while I was unrolling my sleeping bag in the center of the settlement and decided he just had to crawl right into it and make himself comfy.

When the wolf-pack prompted me to give him a name, all I could think of were those wolf-comics; of the Shroud and Justice, of Grognak and Fang.

Fang thought I smelled like hot glass and brass buttons, and that was my name from then on.

At least he wasn’t a sister. I could protect everybody with a brother, without ever having to worry about not being there when someone needed me. Not that I wouldn’t have loved a sister too-- but I knew my luck, and I knew I probably would have come out smelling like some sort of flowers.

Better I didn’t try my luck; I liked my name plenty fine.


End file.
